Old Guard says Market Bubble vs New Guard says Market Correction. What say you? 1 1

[Vince G]

13 minutes ago, lostboys said:

 

I was one of the fortunate ones who got back into comics right before the boom...May/June 2020.

I've been tracking the books I bought and most did get a huge bump but have stayed steady since said bump.

ASM 300, 316 and 361 got their bumps earlier than 252.

I was able to get the first 3 back in 2020 without going broke but could not afford to buy them today.

I passed on a bunch of 252s in the past 10 months but wish I hadn't because now it's too expensive. 9.6 jumped from 230 to 525 out of nowhere and they're selling for 700 on Ebay.

I won't buy one now because it had its bump now and I don't see it going above 1000 anytime soon...i missed it.

What I'm trying to say is don't chase the dragon. These books had their bumps and will probably stay where they are or go down slightly.

If you can get a book for FMV, go for it but don't go over paying expecting another huge bump.

 

Right there with ya.  And to think, I balked at buying a 9.8 copy of 252 for $325 in the fall   because I felt the price was high by $25.  Now, if I spend 1k, it goes into a lower grade GA or SA book.

 

[musicmeta]

2 hours ago, valiantman said:

It's not really possible to buy a sandwich with bitcoin - that's more of a "we're hip" advertisement for a deli.  Yes, you can spend 0.00000001 of a bitcoin (it's called a 'satoshi' and there are 100,000,000 per bitcoin), but the fee is something like $25.  You wouldn't do it.  However, the fee to move 10 bitcoins (half a million dollars) is also $25.  What do banks charge each other to move $10,000,000?  In bitcoin, it would be a $25 fee.  Buying bitcoin in 2010 was very complicated, and some guy who even knew what he was doing is still trying to get $400,000,000 of his own bitcoin out of a landfill (the article says $280M, but that was months ago. It's $400M now).  So, even though I had heard of bitcoin in 2010, I don't feel bad that I didn't buy any.  I didn't know how.  It's getting easier to buy bitcoin, but you can't buy it with your stock broker.  There's only one way to do that, and it's complicated, a trust owns bitcoin and you can buy into the trust (Grayscale - GBTC stock).  So, you have to purposefully open an account with a crypto exchange, and most people won't.  Banks won't sell you bitcoin.  There are bitcoin ATMs now, but they're taking fees like crazy and you're overpaying.  So, bitcoin is both "well-established" and "extremely early" as far as being "normal".

I just own a little bit of stock in the company I work for.  I had no idea how to buy bitcoin until this.  

[Lazyboy]

4 hours ago, Dr. Dank said:

it's all a figment of our imagination and belief is all that sustains currency

Yes.

[MetalPSI]

3 hours ago, the blob said:

you really don't need $3.24 million

Nice of you to say that, but to sustain myself for 40 years, yes I do

[thunsicker]

2 hours ago, the blob said:

Brain hurts. I'll go back to being depressed about buying 1,000 shares of razorfish in 2001 rather than nearly 3000 shares of Apple at the same price at the same time. If I am reading stock splits right that would be about $20 million now.

Yeah my brush with being rich...

In 2000 I was working for PALM.  I moved back to the midwest and continued working for them.  Then they started bleeding money and laying people off.  I went and got a dev job here in the midwest.  Most of my team back in California went over to Apple to work on a new project they had for a mobile audio player.  It being silicon valley around the turn of the millenia they all got tons of stock options.  My cousin (who was on the team with me) is retired at 51 and looking on opening a brew pub with some of his millions.

[valiantman]

15 minutes ago, musicmeta said:

2 hours ago, valiantman said:

It's not really possible to buy a sandwich with bitcoin - that's more of a "we're hip" advertisement for a deli.  Yes, you can spend 0.00000001 of a bitcoin (it's called a 'satoshi' and there are 100,000,000 per bitcoin), but the fee is something like $25.  You wouldn't do it.  However, the fee to move 10 bitcoins (half a million dollars) is also $25.  What do banks charge each other to move $10,000,000?  In bitcoin, it would be a $25 fee.  Buying bitcoin in 2010 was very complicated, and some guy who even knew what he was doing is still trying to get $400,000,000 of his own bitcoin out of a landfill (the article says $280M, but that was months ago. It's $400M now).  So, even though I had heard of bitcoin in 2010, I don't feel bad that I didn't buy any.  I didn't know how.  It's getting easier to buy bitcoin, but you can't buy it with your stock broker.  There's only one way to do that, and it's complicated, a trust owns bitcoin and you can buy into the trust (Grayscale - GBTC stock).  So, you have to purposefully open an account with a crypto exchange, and most people won't.  Banks won't sell you bitcoin.  There are bitcoin ATMs now, but they're taking fees like crazy and you're overpaying.  So, bitcoin is both "well-established" and "extremely early" as far as being "normal".

I just own a little bit of stock in the company I work for.  I had no idea how to buy bitcoin until this.  

Robinhood does have the "14-year-old-borrowed-mom's-ID" version of buying crypto.  It works, but you can't move the crypto (yet), so you own it and you can buy/sell, but you can't take gains without converting back to cash.  Robinhood is where the (mostly 14-year-olds) pump and dump Gamestop and dogecoin.  It's better than nothing, but just barely.  PayPal will let you buy crypto now (with a personal account, not a business account), but you can't sell it, trade it, or spend it... yet.

The "goal" of decentralized finance (defi) is to eliminate the need for any accounts with any exchanges/banks/brokers and just have the trades happen in a public ledger.  That's a few steps away from being "cost-effective", but you can do it now.  It's called "swaps" and you can use any number of sites that will register your swaps for you without having to create a full account (like a banking/exchange account).  

But you're right... most people have no idea how to buy bitcoin, fewer know how to trade it without an exchange and hold it "offline" (which is its own thing "crypto-wallet"), and some long-time bitcoin user still lost $400M in a landfill.

"Bitcoin is crazy, stupid, way overpriced, isn't really a currency, just a bunch of ones and zeroes, doesn't have any "real" purpose, and is probably still getting started." <--- That sentence has been true every year for 10 years.

Edited May 4, 2021 by valiantman

[innocuous]

2 hours ago, NewWorldOrder said:

What years were razorfish around?  Honestly I have never heard of them.

Started mid-90s. I personally thought they were more shills than actual web developers. But, what do I know, I'm not rich like they are. One of the companies I had vested stock in was acquired (but I left the acquired company before the acquisition) giving me pennies.

[innocuous]

5 minutes ago, valiantman said:

But you're right... most people have no idea how to buy bitcoin, fewer know how to trade it without an exchange and hold it "offline" (which is its own thing "crypto-wallet"), and some long-time bitcoin user still lost $400M in a landfill.

This is changing. My non-tech savvy in-laws are now asking about Coinbase since it went public recently. Now at an all-time low.

For record, I'm in agreement that there will be stagnation or correction on what are "blue chips" that had a run-up. The rest, there is the possibility for the bubble to pop.

[valiantman]

3 minutes ago, innocuous said:

This is changing. My non-tech savvy in-laws are now asking about Coinbase since it went public recently. Now at an all-time low.

For record, I'm in agreement that there will be stagnation or correction on what are "blue chips" that had a run-up. The rest, there is the possibility for the bubble to pop.

Exactly - "asking" means they are thinking of putting money where it isn't.  The current cryptocurrency bubble isn't made up of "regular people" who just don't know what they're doing.  Bubbles tend to need that key ingredient.

[RedGiant]

Melt-up? 

Probably... well in many cases, but it depends on what book you are talking about and your time range.  Who really knows, I don't.  I can tell you I've been buying and selling comics for about 35 years and I've NEVER seen anything like the last 4-6 months, EVER - not in back issues at least.  I guess that puts me in the old guard category.

For those who aren't finance junkies here are cliffsnotes from Investopedia:

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• A melt-up is a sudden, persistent rise in the price of a security or market, often due to investor herding.
• Melt ups are not necessarily indicative of a fundamental shift and may reflect market psychology instead.
• Poor decisions to buy in to a melt-up can be avoided by focusing on economic indicators that provide an overall picture of the health of the US economy or on the fundamentals of a stock.

 

 

Edited May 4, 2021 by RedGiant

[RonS2112]

9 minutes ago, RedGiant said:

Melt-up? 

Probably... well in many cases, but it depends on what book you are talking about and your time range.  Who really knows, I don't.  I can tell you I've been buying and selling comics for about 35 years and I've NEVER seen anything like the last 4-6 months, EVER - not in back issues at least.  I guess that puts me in the old guard category.

For those who aren't finance junkies here are cliffsnotes from Investopedia:

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• A melt-up is a sudden, persistent rise in the price of a security or market, often due to investor herding.
• Melt ups are not necessarily indicative of a fundamental shift and may reflect market psychology instead.
• Poor decisions to buy in to a melt-up can be avoided by focusing on economic indicators that provide an overall picture of the health of the US economy or on the fundamentals of a stock.

 

 

I think the first two bullets are absolutely true.  Exhibit A being the sudden proliferation of slab-n-flip Youtube influencers.  There's absolutely no indication that any of these guys have any appreciation for what's between the covers of the slabs they are flipping.  Have any of them READ ASM 300?  Could any of them name any book Bill Mantlo has written?  To me this is evidence of an easy-in, easy-out collecting mentality, and most of the guys doing "haul" videos are going to lose interest the second the cracks in the market start to show.

[the blob]

1 hour ago, Dr. Dank said:

Nice of you to say that, but to sustain myself for 40 years, yes I do

Don't they have pensions in Canada?

[MetalPSI]

Just now, the blob said:

Don't they have pensions in Canada?

I've already mentioned it. If I wanted to retire now, that is the goal. 3.24 million

[MatterEaterLad]

Speaking of Bitcoin -- I have bought and sold thru an Instagram dealer this year. 5% consignment fee and was paid in Bitcoin. For the New Guard this is no big deal, for the Old Guard (like me) it feels like buying weed in a parking lot in junior high. 

Edited May 5, 2021 by MatterEaterLad

[the blob]

2 hours ago, MatterEaterLad said:

Speaking of Bitcoin -- I have bought and sold thru an Instagram dealer this year. 5% consignment fee and was paid in Bitcoin. For the New Guard this is no big deal, for the Old Guard (like me) it feels like buying weed in a parking lot in junior high. 

Most New Guard don't know how to do it either.

But doesn't a partial coin cost $25 or something to transfer?

 

 

[MatterEaterLad]

52 minutes ago, the blob said:

Most New Guard don't know how to do it either.

But doesn't a partial coin cost $25 or something to transfer?

 

 

Honestly, I haven't shopped around for the best rate because it's so new to me, but you can do a transaction on the Gemini Exchange for 1.49%, so about half of what PayPal charges. But of course, zero protections. Feels like the Wild West out there. 

Edited May 5, 2021 by MatterEaterLad

[RedGiant]

21 hours ago, RedGiant said:

Melt-up? 

Probably... well in many cases, but it depends on what book you are talking about and your time range.  Who really knows, I don't.  I can tell you I've been buying and selling comics for about 35 years and I've NEVER seen anything like the last 4-6 months, EVER - not in back issues at least.  I guess that puts me in the old guard category.

Follow-up to this point - the only precedence I can remember that was even close to current state of the back issue market was in the early 2000s.  CGC just opened up shop, GPA started up shortly after, tracking real time data vs having to rely on a year old OSPG.  This was a big deal and big shift in back issue collecting.  At the time people were paying what seemed like 'stupid money' for really high grade stuff and it wasn't just mega keys, it was just about everything (see example chart below) - some of those purchases likely played out very well in the long term, but my recollection of that time period was a drop in prices, normalization, then 'winners' continued to climb in price and 'losers' continued to fall or remain flat once normalized for years and years and years.  Now there is another huge up-tick - will it continue to go up?  Maybe.  Will it 'crash'?  Maybe.  Will it 'correct'?  Maybe.  I don't know, but I'd guess there is a good chance depends on which book you are talking about and what timeline you are talking about.  If you are talking about an Action 1 ten years from now, I'd be willing to bet there is a good chance it will be worth more than it is today.  If you are talking about Limited VariantA of movie spec B that came out twelve minutes ago and it is already going for $2k, I'd be willing to bet it will likely be worth less 10 years from now.  Doesn't mean that will be the case 100% of the time.  In short, everyone is right and everyone is wrong - depends on how it is framed.  Point being, I show one chart below, I could show another chart that is the exact opposite, so it's mostly perspective.  Note: some of the really old guard, older than me, might argue that the 1970s was insane with price increases, and price history suggest that is true, but I wasn't collecting then.

[GeeksAreMyPeeps]

The Youtuber joined the board. We were discussing some of his videos over here:

 

[RedGiant]

I'm old school, and like to see data, not just people hyping things on the internet.  I know, super lame, def old guard.  

n=1, but this book has been one of (if not the top) copper superhero book forever (and lots of sales data to analyze).  Actual sales data from almost 20 years.  What you see might surprise you.  Does this mean I think the book will crash and go to zero?  No, absolutely not.  In fact, I just bought one the other day (but in full disclosure I've probably bought 50 copies over the years), but this thing will not likely continue to double in value every 4 months, not when it's gone up on average 11-12% a year for nearly 20 years.  I was surprised that 9.8s didn't outperform.  The Venom movie came out in 2018, so the bump in 2017 makes sense to me.

Edited May 6, 2021 by RedGiant

[valiantman]

29 minutes ago, RedGiant said:

I'm old school, and like to see data, not just people hyping things on the internet.  I know, super lame, def old guard.  

n=1, but this book has been one of (if not the top) copper superhero book forever (and lots of sales data to analyze).  Actual sales data from almost 20 years.  What you see might surprise you.  Does this mean I think the book will crash and go to zero?  No, absolutely not.  In fact, I just bought one the other day (but in full disclosure I've probably bought 50 copies over the years), but this thing will not likely continue to double in value every 4 months, not when it's gone up on average 11-12% a year for nearly 20 years.  I was surprised that 9.8s didn't outperform.  The Venom movie came out in 2018, so the bump in 2017 makes sense to me.

You should throw CGC 8.0 onto your ASM #300 for a real surprise.